The finalists were invited to the ORTEC HQ in Zoetermeer (The Netherlands) on November 14th, 2017.

The organization congratulates the winners with this great result. Once again, we would like to thank all contestants for putting their valuable time and effort into this competition, thereby contributing to a great and challenging experience for everyone.

We hope that the challenge will live on through this website. While after July 2nd, no more all-time-best prizes are rewarded, it remains possible to submit new solutions to the all-time-best instances and improve your ranking.

Last but not least, the next VeRoLog solver challenge will also be organized by ORTEC. Keep an eye on this website in the upcoming fall for more information. That challenge will run until the summer of 2019, when the next VeRoLog conference is held in Seville, Spain.

— the ORTEC VeRoLog solver challenge organization.

Welcome to the most challenging vehicle routing optimization competition! Hosted by VeRoLog – the Working Group on Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization (within EURO, the Association of the European Operational Research Societies), this year’s challenge officially started during the VeRoLog meeting in Nantes (June 2016). However, new participants are still encouraged to sign up, as this challenge does not end until July 2017 when the next VeRoLog meeting takes place in Amsterdam. The challenge is proposed, sponsored and ran by ORTEC.

The problem being addressed arises from practice and combines aspects from scheduling, routing and inventory. The main difficulty in this problem is that one needs to distribute equipment that is scarce. However, this equipment may be reused, i.e., it may be picked up at one customer and delivered to the next. The problem is defined over a period of several days, and is completely deterministic. In the format used for this challenge the realistic instances are simplified for the sake of clearness, but they preserve the essence of the difficulties.

We are convinced that you will find this problem intriguing and challenging. We hope that your participation will contribute to an exciting challenge and may intensify the research on this problem which is still widely overlooked in the literature.